Microsoft On Demand?

REDMOND, WASH. — Microsoft is thinking outside the box — the software box.

The company already has begun building out and testing an infrastructure that will let it deliver a hybrid of the on-demand model that connects full-featured Windows clients with additional information and functionality from free or subscription-based services.

At Microsoft’s annual Financial Analysts Meeting on Thursday, Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer said new revenue opportunities will come through adding services to software.

”We’re moving from a world where we deliver bits to one where we deliver bits and services across the Internet,” Ballmer said.

In a demonstration of Windows Vista, executives showed an application for physicians that pulled down information from diagnostic equipment connected via Web services to create 3D charts and analysis tools. The rich application ran locally on the client while including data from other systems.

This software-and-services strategy is permeating many Microsoft initiatives, from MSN’s consumer services like Hotmail and MSN Spaces to Office, SharePoint and InfoPath. Execs are calling these ”cloud-based services”.

”Think of our architecture as deliverable in two forms, as a piece of software and as a service we offer to [customers],” Gates told financial analysts at the meeting. ”We’ll have storage in the cloud, so you can connect with different devices. Instead of syncing devices, you connect to the cloud storage we’ve created and sync there.”

This article was first published on internetnews.com. To read the full article, click here.

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020

• Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 05, 2020

• The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  August 14, 2020